Podcast — Meet Shonnie Lavender & Bruce Mulkey
Whether you’re new to the I Do! I Do! blog or you’ve been visiting for awhile, you may be wondering about how we came to be “relationship experts.” Well, actually, we believe our true expertise is solely within OUR relationship. That being said, we have years of experience with dating, un-dating, finding one’s “ideal” partner, commitment, and marriage. We even know plenty about divorce from personal experience (Bruce as someone who has divorced and remarried. Shonnie as a person whose parents divorced and remarried.) So, that means our experience also covers a wide range of topics that affect most couples, including, yet definitely not limited to:
- couples and money issues
- sexuality and intimacy
- communication
- joint decision making
- making up and forgiveness
- sharing household and other duties
- extended family issues
- family transitions
Because our intention is to build a community at I Do! I Do! (Maybe we call that “We Do! We Do!”), we want to get to know one another. So, we’ll start the conversation with this podcast (Simply turn on your speakers and click the “audio mp3″ graphic or “Play Now” text to play the podcast file – 18 minutes.), where we tell you about:
- our backgrounds — can you say May-December?
- how we met — involves mildly crazy ideas, sweat, and lots of runners
- our wedding — it landed us in a Christian Science Monitor story titled, “Nutty Nuptials”
- our history writing marriage/wedding vows — we are one committed couple
- how we came to write I Do! I Do! The Marriage Vow Workbook — a winding path led us to this destination
- our intention with the book — can we change the world one relationship at a time?
Now it’s your turn. We want to meet you. So, leave a comment telling us a bit about yourself(selves), what you’re going for in your relationship, and any questions you’d like us to answer about love, marriage, wedding vows or anything else that would support you in creating and maintaining your ideal relationship.
Marriage advice offered on WCQS radio
On Tuesday, October 10 we were interviewed on WCQS, the public radio station based in Asheville, North Carolina. Host David Hurand talked with us for 30 minutes about
- what it takes to write your own wedding vows,
- the benefits of writing your wedding vows, and
- how the process we take you through in I Do! I Do! The Marriage Vow Workbook can help you build a strong foundation for marriage or improve the marriage you’ve already created.
We also answered questions from callers about relationships and wedding vows. Listen to the interview, then let us know what questions you have.
Since this is my third marriage, how can I write credibly about the importance of wedding vows?
Good question. And given the fact that I coauthored I Do! I Do! The Marriage Vow Workbook, I figure sooner or later someone will ask it. So here’s the answer:
Both of my former wives were lovely and loving women, and my time with them was filled with periods of deep connection as well as periods of great challenge. However, being immature and irresponsible, I knew very little about commitment–what it meant to be faithful to a significant other. In addition, there were no basic agreements in my first two marriages about how we would be with one another and how we would sustain our relationship. It was like trying to play a baseball game without any rules. How many outs per inning? Three? Four? Five? Is catching the ball on one hop an out or do you have to catch it on the fly? Without such an essential element of a successful long-term relationship, it’s really no wonder that we ultimately grew apart and divorced.
After my second divorce, I retreated to a little cottage in the hills outside Austin, Texas. I had been with an uninterrupted stream of women my entire life–first my mom, next my girlfriends, then my two wives–and now was a time for me to focus on myself rather than the other. I lived there the better part of five years, with my cat, Chocolate, as my only companion. I got clear about who I was’not the macho, tough guy I sometimes pretended to be, but not the wimpy, new-age guy either. I got clear about my purpose in life. And I got clear about the kind of woman I wanted to share my life with. And wouldn’t you know it: As soon as I put my explicit intention out to the Universe, the woman of my dreams showed up.
Though totally unaware of one another’s existence, both Shonnie and I serendipitously joined a marathon training program during the hot Austin Texas summer of 1995. Based on a time trial, we both were placed in the intermediate runners, a group composed of approximately thirty runners. As our group’s numbers dwindled in the months preceding the race, a handful of us continued to train together at Lake Austin every Saturday morning, completing the Austin Motorola Marathon together in February 1996. And though the remaining members of our group sometimes went out for pancakes at the Magnolia Cafe after our weekly runs, we typically didn’t see each other outside our workouts. So one Saturday we made plans to go out for music and a few beers. When the appointed time arrived, however, only two runners showed up–me and Shonnie. And the rest, as they say, is history.
A few months later when Shonnie and I entered a committed relationship, we decided we would create commitments and an intention for our relationship before we moved in together. Thus we had agreements about how we would be with one another that served us right from the beginning, agreements that still hang on our bedroom wall. When we were preparing for our marriage, we devoted a lot of time and attention to the creation our marriage vows and our intention for our marriage. With these sacred commitments in place, we’re clear about which behaviors are acceptable and which are not. We’re assured that neither of us has any intention of deliberately doing or saying anything disrespectful or unloving. We give each other permission to speak up when he/she sees something that’s incongruent in the other’s words or actions. We support one another to grow, to expand, to fully be oneself. We acknowledge our individual and joint successes and commiserate when things don’t turn out as we’d planned. We envision our future together and work to create it. All of this from our steadfast love for one another and these sacred vows we are pledged to uphold.
“Getting the Love You Want”: A timeless and extraordinary resource for all couples
I recently renewed my acquaintance with a book that’s had a significant influence on my
life–Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples, the classic relationship handbook by Harville Hendrix, Ph.D. This book remains an essential addition to the library of couples who want to create loving, fulfilling, joyful and enduring relationships. The exercises in Part III of the book are themselves invaluable and can empower willing couples to deal with the challenges that arise in every relationship and, perhaps, eliminate repeated visits to the marriage counselor.
First published in 1988, I first came upon this book in the early 1990s. My second marriage had just gone down the tubes, and I was struggling to understand why. How could my former wife have left me when just a few short years ago, she was so totally in love with me?
It was not until I read Getting the Love You Want, that I realized I was relying on her to take care of me, to somehow make me whole, responsibilities she had not signed up for, needs that were impossible for her to satisfy. So I began a process of deep introspection: How did I help create the breakdown of my relationship and, ultimately, how I could go about initiating a more conscious relationship the next time around?
A few years later, a number of Harville’s exercises included in Part III of Getting the Love You Want played a significant role in forming the foundation for my romantic partnership with the woman who I would later marry, including:
- Creating a joint vision for the relationship–Being clear about what each of us envisioned for our relationship
- Mirroring–Learning to really hear what my partner is saying and letting her know I have done so
- Re-romanticizing–Sharing specific information with one another about what pleases me, what pleases her and agreeing to perform those acts of pleasure regularly
Today as I was re-examining Getting the Love You Want to write this review, I came upon the final exercise in the book–Visualization of Love. I instinctively began following the instructions–visualizing Shonnie as a whole spiritual being, who like all of us, has been wounded. And I imagined that the love I was sending her at that moment was healing her wounds. Finally I imagined the love I’d sent her coming back to me and healing my wounds. Afterwards I sat for a few moments in quiet gratitude–for my life, for Shonnie, for Harville and for the wisdom that he so readily shares with us.
Wedding vows from Tricia & Lance Secretan
Here are the original wedding vows of Tricia & Lance Secretan who married on May 29, 1993. They recite these unique romantic wedding vows to each other spontaneously and actively keep these commitments alive in the way they live.
I want you to know that I love you,
And I will for the rest of my days.
I will trust and respect you,
Tell the truth and embrace you.
Every day. All the time. And always.
For the rest of our lives together
Every day in your favor I’ll bend;
I’ll make rain seem like dew -
I’ll make you smile when you’re blue.
That’s forever and ever. Amen.
